St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON – The Senate gave final approval Thursday to broad anti- methamphetamine provisions that will impose tight curbs on the sale of popular cold remedies used to make the highly addictive narcotic.

The long-stalled crackdown on cold medicine sales – initially opposed by retail and drug lobbyists – passed after months of intense negotiations with those industries over the scope of the new restrictions.

The measure, part of legislation reauthorizing the Patriot Act, has already passed the House. The president is expected to sign it into law.

Proponents cheered Thursday’s vote, saying it would go a long way to combating a growing meth crisis across the country. The drug has taken a particularly severe toll in rural areas of the West and Midwest, with local sheriffs in Missouri, Illinois and other states overwhelmed by meth labs and the addicts who fuel them.

At the heart of the new measure is a requirement that grocery stores and other retail outlets put Sudafed and other cold remedies that contain pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient used to make meth, behind a pharmacy counter or in a locked cabinet.

Consumers will have to show an ID and sign a logbook before buying the products. They will also be limited to buying nine grams each month – anywhere from 37 to 300 pills, depending on the amount of pseudoephedrine in the medication.

“There will be fewer addicts because (pseudoephedrine) is not going to be as readily available,” said Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., who co-authored the bill with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

“You’re not going to have these toxic waste dumps in the neighborhoods,” Talent added. And fewer local sheriffs will find “their budgets overwhelmed as they try and stem this tide.”

Jason Grellner, a narcotics investigator in Franklin County, Mo., and eastern director of the Missouri Narcotics Officers Association, said even though Missouri already has similar restrictions on the books, the new federal measure will be a major boost in the state.

He said the new law will have a great impact “by hampering the efforts of offenders to cross state lines to buy cold tablets and bring them back to cook in Missouri,” Grellner said. He added that meth makers have started driving as far as Ohio to buy cold pills.

The legislation initially generated stiff resistance from some retail lobbyists. But opposition to the bill waned as the scope of the meth problem became clear – and after Talent and Feinstein amended their bill to allow sales of cold pills at grocery stores and other retail outlets without pharmacies.

Senate passage of the bill came as a new report showed a dramatic spike in treatment rates for meth addiction. Nationally, admissions for meth treatment quadrupled from 1993 to 2003, according to a study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Illinois, Missouri

Meth admissions to drug treatment facilities in Illinois increased from 1 per 100,000 admissions in 1993 to 19 per 100,000 in 2003. In Missouri, meth admissions jumped from 7 per 100,000 in 1993 to 84 per 100,000 in 2003. Most western states and some midwestern states had much higher admission rates for meth.

The Talent-Feinstein bill also includes authorization for new funding to train law enforcement, to aid in investigation, prosecution, and clean-up of meth cases and labs, as well federal grants to help children affected by the drug. It also establishes new reporting requirements for the import and export of pseudoephedrine and other chemicals.

Talent and Feinstein conceded that their bill will not end the meth scourge; indeed, they predicted that even as the small meth labs that have plagued rural counties wane, meth makers will turn to international sources, such as Mexico, for the drug’s ingredients.

Police say that already, as local labs shut down, more meth is being imported from Mexico.

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